This is a very useful service, and I wish I’d heard about it prior to today. I switched to a new mobile network with the release of the iPhone 4S, and prior to switching, I bought a Pay As You Go SIM card from the prospective network and used it with my iPhone 3GS for a week, swapping it in and out to try and get a picture of what signal would be like around my home at the time. Being able to look up the data on a map would clearly have been much quicker!

How did I find out about the company? Well, I recently read an article by OpenSignalMaps in which they talked about Android fragmentation, and I found it very interesting indeed. I ended up bookmarking it in order to share it with my Twitter following, but not before I’d noticed a couple of sentences towards the end of the article that got my brain whirring.

…the 5 countries where OSM gets most use are: US, Brazil, China, Russia, Mexico. From what we’re seeing the developing world is no longer developing but leading Europe.

I wasn’t sure what to think of that sentence. I don’t feel like Europe is currently trailing in terms of mobile¹, and I was wondering whether that was just a pro-Europe bias or whether it was an accurate picture. Then I realised what was bugging me about that list:

All the countries in that list are significantly larger than the countries that comprise Europe.

If your product is a way for people to see what the cellular signal is like in their area, it stands to reason that this product will be more popular in countries with bad cellular signal. In a small country, it takes fewer towers to completely cover the country, and so coverage will be better, I reasoned. This would provide an alternative reason for why the app has not seen as many downloads in Europe.

Once I had started down this line of thought, I wanted to check whether my suspicions had any basis in fact. In terms of the world’s largest countries by area, what positions are occupied by the five countries listed? Where is the largest European country on the same list? So, I looked for answers, and found the relevant Wikipedia article, entitled List of countries and dependencies by area.

Of the five countries on OpenSignalMaps’ list, four of those countries are in the top five countries by area in the world. They are Russia (largest), China, the USA and Brazil (3rd–5th largest respectively). The remaining country, Mexico, is the 14th largest country in the world. So, how does this compare with the largest European country? Well, France is the largest European country, clocking in at 49th.

I disagree that the data from OpenSignalMaps shows anything like “the developing world…leading Europe”. In fact, I think it shows the plain fact that the relatively small countries in Europe have, in general, a better level of cellular coverage than the largest countries on Earth. An app that exists solely to allow the user to deal with bad cellular coverage (or bad infrastructure in any arena) will do badly in countries that have a good infrastructure. The countries which are leading in app downloads are the very countries that aren’t leading when it comes to getting signal.

The first step was finding a way to install Markdown on WordPress¹. I searched on the website for an extension to do this, but couldn’t find an ‘official’ one, so I searched on Markdown-Discuss (the mailing list set up by John Gruber) to see whether I was mistaken. It turned out I was, although the plugin that I’d recommend isn’t listed on the WordPress website: since WordPress is based in PHP, and since Michel Fortin has written Markdown Extra for PHP, one can just download PHP Markdown Extra from his website and upload it to WordPress as a plugin.

The process is easy. Once the zip file has downloaded, simply unzip it. You’ll be presented with a folder containing three files: two in .text format (one of the accepted file extensions for plaintext files that contain Markdown syntax) and one PHP file. I renamed the folder to php-markdown-extra and then uploaded it to my WordPress installation (the filepath is wordpress/wp-content/plugins). WordPress then sees this as a plugin, and so you’re ready to roll!

But what should you use to edit your Markdown text? Initially, I tried a Mac app for Markdown called Valletta, which didn’t impress me. One of the key features of Markdown that I adore is its ability to turn -- into — and turn 'typewriter quotation marks' into ‘typographic quotation marks’. Valletta doesn’t implement this part of Markdown, so I don’t recommend it. However, the beauty of Markdown is that it’s just plain text with specific syntax, and so you can feel free to use the plaintext editor of your choice. Personally, I flit between Textwrangler, on the Mac and Notepad++, on Windows. Both apps can be configured to highlight Markdown syntax², and I’m actually using TextWrangler to write this post.

Although I don’t use a specific app on my computers, I have found a rather good app on my iPhone. An iOS app by the name of Elements, it started life as a simple plaintext editor that supported Dropbox as a filesystem, but has since gained the ability to preview Markdown-formatted text and also copy the HTML generated as a result, for use in other apps.³ Elements is really good in a variety of ways: Dropbox sync is chief amongst them, but the ability to choose what file extension you give to Markdown files is also a very nice touch. It allows you to choose which folder on your Dropbox you want to synchronise⁴, too. Find it on the App Store here (£2.99/$4.99).

Lastly, let’s return to Footnotify. Markdown Extra allows for easy footnote creation, and Footnotify complements this brilliantly — I use both the Chrome extension and the JavaScript that provides the overlays on this blog. It will work whether you’re using Markdown on your blog directly or generating footnotes on your own. If you like what it’s doing for your browsing experience on my blog, you should definitely download it and give it a try with your own website!

I am glad that I got the desire to try Markdown because I feel it really has enhanced my writing. For me, the main benefits are the syntax, which makes certain tasks (bullet points, linking, footnotes) much easier. For the reader, the better formatted text brings something to the design of the website, whereas the footnotes mean that my frequent desire to wander off the topic is nowhere near as aggravating as it might be. I’d definitely recommend Markdown to anyone who writes online, even if it’s relatively infrequently.

I didn’t upgrade to the iPhone 4, instead waiting for the iPhone 4S, and so by the time I was using a Retina Display, most apps had been updated to use sharper graphics and textures. When I did upgrade, some of my apps still hadn’t been updated to the higher resolution, and so I faced a choice between deleting them or keeping using them. In most cases, I found other apps that had been updated to work with the new technology, but a handful of apps remained despite their blurry graphics.

iStat by Bjango

Bjango is one of my favourite developers in the Apple community. iStat is an iOS version of their unparalleled Mac app with the same name, and it’s a well-designed app indeed. Opening the app gives you a choice of devices; either the iOS device you’re using or any number of devices found via Bonjour. Getting a device to show up via Bonjour is simple: just install iStat Server from the app’s webpage and you’re ready to monitor statistics.

Select the iOS device, and you get a screen showing you various statistics. Firstly (and least usefully) is a battery readout. This gives you a percentage of the remaining battery; given that this information is already available at the top of the screen, it isn’t terribly useful. Alongside the readout are estimates of how much usage that will permit, which may be useful if you aren’t used to your device’s battery life yet. Another stat is the remaining hard drive space, which is similarly already available through the operating system.

Elsewhere within the statistics, one can see a variety of things that aren’t already in Settings.app. Your device’s IP addresses — both the network’s IP and the IP on any Wi-Fi network — are available, as are the Wi-Fi MAC address and your iPhone’s UDID¹. iStat can also give you the uptime and load of your device, which are interesting, if not useful on a regular basis. A pie chart shows the amount of RAM being used and how much is free — if your device is acting up, checking the remaining RAM might give a clue to the problem. This is in addition to a list of your iPhone’s currently running processes, so you will be able to see which apps are doing things in the background.

What are the minus points with iStat? It doesn’t remember where you were if you switch to a different app and then back, which really annoyed me whilst I was writing this review but may be much less aggravating in general use. Also, when I first got the app, it contained a way to free up the iPhone’s RAM, which was removed in an update that got skewered by the App Store’s reviewers — given that this feature is now available in other apps, it’d be nice to see it return to iStat.

Find iStat on the App Store here (£0.69/$0.99).

Detexify

I use LaTeX², and so this app is very useful from my perspective. If you don’t use LaTeX, then this very possibly won’t be useful for you!

What Detexify does is simple. It allows the user to sketch a character on the screen. It then takes that squiggle and finds a list of symbols available that match it, alongside the name of the package they are in and how to use them in a document. It’s terrifically handy if you’re trying to write a scientific paper. It’s also fairly handy for looking up what Greek characters are called, even if you’re not using LaTeX.

Detexify is available from the App Store in a free or a paid version; the paid version lets you contribute a little to the developer as a ‘thank you’, but otherwise there is no difference between the two. An alternative way to donate is to visit the Detexify website and donate through the provided links (this will mean Apple doesn’t get a cut of your donation).

Find Detexify on the App Store here (free).
Alternatively, buy the Supporter Version (£0.69/$0.99).

iSeismometer by ObjectGraph

This app from ObjectGraph is pretty much self-explanatory: it allows your iPhone to act as a seismometer, with measurements of the movement in the x-, y- and z-axis. Rest it on a table, and tap/shake/tilt the surface to see what it can do. This is an amazing app for demonstrating some of the capabilities present in the iPhone’s hardware, as well as being an excellent way to demonstrate the science of seismology to people who aren’t very knowledgable about it³, and so it stays on my phone despite the fact that the icon and buttons are somewhat pixellated.

Whilst researching this application, I’ve noticed that there are other seismometer apps available in the App Store, but that this is definitely the best free app available despite the non-Retina graphics. However, given a couple of the others are only 69p, I may well try a different one to see whether it converts me!

Find iSeismometer on the App Store here (free).

Galaxy Zoo by Zooniverse

If you haven’t heard of Galaxy Zoo, this may not appeal to you as much as it otherwise would; however, it’s a nice little app. It doesn’t let you do much other than look at images of galaxies and analyse them using the limited set of multiple-choice questions that’s familiar to any Galaxy Zoo user. However, that still means you can make useful contributions to physics whilst standing in the queue at the bank, so it’s definitely worth a look.

Find Galaxy Zoo on the App Store here (free).

SUBCARD® by Subway

SUBCARD® is Subway’s loyalty card app in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland⁴. One can either have a physical card, or download the app, which has a barcode used to load points onto your account. As well as this, the locations of nearby branches of the chain can be ascertained. If you go to Subway often⁵, it’s probably worth a look, but if not, there really isn’t anything else to it.

Find SUBCARD® on the App Store here (free).

Arriva m-Ticket

Somewhat strangely, the Arriva m-Ticket app actually got released — with non-Retina graphics — after the iPhone 4 came out. It allows the user to buy tickets for Arriva buses on their mobile phone; since Arriva operate buses near me, I have the app on my phone. It allows for the purchase of tickets on a variety of timescales in areas that Arriva works in (but a ticket in one area presumably won’t transfer to others). Choose a day ticket, opt for a week’s worth of travel or get the whole year in one go.

Having said all that, my experience has taught me that Arriva’s buses have something in common with this app: they were outdated when they were new and they’re never on time. As such I still haven’t actually used the app to travel anywhere and may need to review it again when I’ve actually had a chance to analyse it in use.

Find Arriva m-Ticket on the App Store here (free).

I understand a DUFF race for the Australian NatCon has been announced. I concluded that it was too late to run a DUFF race for this year’s ANZAC NatCons back in mid-April when the topic came up on the fan fund administrators’ list. I said as much then. In the intervening two weeks the prospect of equitably and successfully running a race to send a North American to one or both antipodean national conventions has moved from being merely not viable to somewhere between ‘unforgivably foolhardy’ and ‘hyperbole fails me’. Or, as I said in my comment on the race announcement in File 770, golly I think this is an outstandingly bad idea. What follows is a refinement of my comments there.

Nominations in this race are open until midnight, on May 11. That’s just ten days from now. Merely deciding to stand in a fan fund race takes a certain amount of thought and preparation, and that doesn’t begin to address time spent familiarizing oneself with the rules of the fund enough to identify potential nominators, contacting them, getting the right number to agree to nominate, and then getting them to submit their nominations to an administrator. Then there’s the question of writing an effective and engaging candidate platform in only 100 words. There realistically isn’t enough time in just ten days for potential candidates who were not alerted before the public announcement to do all that. Which means that the race is biased against candidates that were not pre-alerted before nominations opened. This opens DUFF up to legitimate complaints of bias. It is deeply unfair to any potential candidate who was not in the circle of those approached before nominations opened. The whole point of the nomination period is to widely and publicly announce that there will be a race so that any eligible fan can reasonably expect to mount a candidacy. An abbreviated nomination period with pre-identified candidates gives the appearance that the DUFF race is not truly open to all eligible fans. Accusations of favoritism are quick to arise in the context of fan funds, and I feel that running a race under these circumstances stands a good chance of damaging DUFF’s reputation for fairness.

Once nominations close the DUFF administrators will need to communicate with each other to compare nominators, validate them, and transfer any other pertinent information received by either — nominations and candidate’s statements can go to either administrator, after all. The thing is, the two current administrators have intermittent communications problems which could easily recur. It’s very possible that there could be some, even considerable, delays getting the ballots written, edited and distributed after nominations close. Even assuming the ballots get out the very next day, May 12, that’s only 19 days before the probable voting deadline of May 31. That’s barely more than two weeks’ voting. Two months is a more normal voting period. The voting period needs to be long enough that candidates can mount a campaign, and long enough that candidates and administrators can promote voting in the race at conventions, in fanzines, and through various social media. Getting people to vote and donate is surprisingly hard work, and without some time to build buzz, chances are good that the race will see few votes cast. Two of the things a fan fund race is supposed to do is raise money for the fund through balloting donations, and to raise awareness of the fund through a rousing public contest, amiably but ardently contested in as many fannish forums as possible. This will do neither.

Assuming that voting closes, as predicted, on May 31, the administrators will again need to get in touch with each other to exchange vote information, validate ballots, and do a joint vote count. I normally allow a full weekend for that process, in order to account for time differences allow time to vet last minute ballots and reach the contestants . So supposing for a moment that the DUFF administrators are still communicating perfectly, we can still reasonably suppose that a winner won’t be announced until June 3. By then, the New Zealand NatCon is over. The Australian one begins in FOUR DAYS. Of which two will need to be spent traveling. Who can realistically imagine booking any trip from North America to Australia in two days, let alone one that involves soliciting crash space with, and transport to, fans in multiple widely spaced cities (as is normal for a DUFF trip)? Even pretending that the ballots are validated and counted instantaneously, and the winner is announced June 1, the amount of planning time left for the winner is well under two weeks, therefore the tickets will be hideously expensive. In other words, a race run in this way will expend the maximum amount of funds to send a winner, while earning the minimum of raised funds during the race.

All this potential damage to the fund in aid of what? A trip to a convention that even the nominations announcement acknowledges the winner may not plausibly attend? Why announce a race to a convention the winner can’t make it to? A fan fund win is supposed to be an honor. Where’s the honor in all the frantic rushing around the candidates and winner would be forced into, especially when the only reason to hold a race now is to finish it before a convention the winner can’t expect to attend anyway?

I say stop the madness now. If the winner of such a DUFF race can’t attend the convention the race is held for, why not defer the race? There is no rule or moral obligation to hold races every year, or for a Natcon, or for that matter, to hold races only once in a year. There are other, better ways to hold this race: choose another ANZAC convention to send the winner to, or hold the race late this year for next year’s Australian and/or New Zealand Natcon, and hold a 2013 race for LoneStarCon, or (worst case) simply defer a year and hold the next southbound race next year and the next northbound one in 2014. If the object of this DUFF race is just to achieve “a reasonable amount of contact, merriment, and satisfaction” then there is absolutely no compelling reason to hold it now. And there is every reason to avoid all the potential frenzy, inconvenience, expense, and public discord that seem so very likely. So let’s not hold it now. Let’s hold it when there is enough time for a fair and equitable nomination period for potential candidates, a solid, high profile campaign for the candidates and the fund, and a sufficient planning period for the winner.

I strongly urge the DUFF administrators to reconsider this present course of action as deeply unwise and potentially very damaging to the fund. I urge them to reschedule the race to allow for a reasonable period of nominations, voting, and planning. If the administrators cannot or will not reschedule, then I strongly urge current and potential candidates to refrain from standing, or withdraw their candidacies, to defer the race de facto by cancelling this one. If the administrators and the candidates persist in this folly, then I strongly suggest that voters who care about the health of DUFF vote Hold Over Funds, without prejudice against any of the candidates, but for the greater good of the fund.

It was recently announced, in a recent news post from File 770, that DUFF (the fan fund between North America and Australasia) is to have a race down under this year. The convention to which the fund will send a delegate, Continuum VIII (this year’s national Australian convention), is to be held 39 days from the announcement. This means that anyone who wishes to stand for DUFF has ten days to find five nominators, twenty days to campaign, and nine days to arrange an entire trip and make it from North America to Australia in time for the convention. If the candidate is feeling daring, then they might try to make it to unCONventional 2012 in New Zealand, which would give them pretty much no time whatsoever between the end-of-May deadline and the start-of-June convention.

What follows is not my opinion as the administrator of a fellow fan fund: that would be out of place, and so I’m not going to comment in an official capacity. This is my personal opinion, as a fan with an interest in fan funds. And, this is, to speak plainly, quite insane. I know for a fact that David Cake (the Australasian administrator) was not in favour of such a race as recently as mid-April; I agreed with him at the time, because I think the timescale is fundamentally flawed. David has since said:

I think that IF you think the timing on the race is overly rushed for a reasonable race and/or trip, then voting for Hold Over Funds is an appropriate way to express that opinion.

Certainly, that would be my recommendation, given the below considerations.

Let’s consider the prospect of time off. Getting time off with a month’s notice should be fine, if candidates arrange it as soon as the nominations period closes. Getting time off with a week’s notice is more tricky — candidates are, I think, going to have to book time off work before they know they’ve won. There’s also the thorny issue of how long you stay — booking more than two weeks off at a time can be tricky, without warning your employer in advance. Is two weeks long enough to do justice to a trip Down Under?

What about the cost of the flights? There are nine days (at maximum) between the close of voting and the start of the trip. The flight costs are not going to be kind, so close to the point of boarding: can a fund really afford to send someone at such notice? One thing is certain: The eventual delegate is going to have to raise a lot of money during their administration in order to offset the cost of flights. One of the ways to raise funds is traditionally through voting fees, but I’m unsure that that will be enough of a revenue stream to offset an extremely expensive trip, so the onus will be on whoever wins the race to set new records in terms of fundraising ability.¹ There’s also the risk that fans concerned about the potential cost to the fund might vote to Hold Over Funds, which would be a great shame in many ways.

Then there’s the voting itself. If you have a voting period of twenty days, how is the fund going to attract a large number of voters in this race? If the extreme costs of the trip is married to an unusually low-revenue voting period with a low turnout from North American and Australasian fandom, then that’s even worse for the fund financially speaking. Although I’m sure DUFF has the money to weather the storm, it seems unwise to tempt fate by running a race that could be a financial disaster in multiple ways.

If I wanted to run a southward DUFF race before what seems likely to be a northward race to LoneStarCon 3, I’d run it in 2013², and race to the Australian Natcon in 2013, Conflux. This convention will be held in April, which means you could use publicity from the southward race to kickstart the northward one:

• Southward nominations open — 2012.
• Southward voting opens — start of January.
• Southward delegate announced, northward nominations open — February.
• Northward voting opens — March.
• Southward trip begins. Delegate publicises northward race — April.
• Northward delegate announced — May/June.
• Northward trip begins — Summer.

In conclusion, I don’t see this as a sensible move. I think — whatever the logic behind this extremely small window of opportunity for potential candidates — this is ultimately going to cost DUFF. I think the likely situation on May 11th is that the race cannot go ahead as fewer than two candidates³ have been nominated, and that the whole affair will have just been an opportunity to court criticism and bafflement. And that’s the best case scenario, since the alternative is a delegate who has nowhere near enough time to put together a proper trip and ends up spending a lot of money on what will ultimately be a waste of everyone’s time.

The first thing that it’s important to note is that Google Drive replaces Google Docs. That is to say, if you had any documents in Docs, they’re now in your Drive, and going to the old Google Docs URL will redirect you to the new Drive URL. I use Google Docs to edit fanzine articles with España Sheriff¹ — when either of us has written an article, we upload it so that the other can go through and make suggestions. The everyone-can-edit model suits this workflow extremely well, and so I now have a number of fanzine articles saved in Google Drive (as well as a bunch of work from my undergraduate degree).

All told, there are several pieces of work in there, and I am not keen to cede the rights to those to Google. This means that the Google Terms of Service make me slightly nervous:

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.

Is this anything to worry about? It’s certainly been noticed online, but is it anything to worry about? Well, firstly, it’s important to note that Google do not take ownership of your files — they just give themselves a licence to do things with your files. This is an important distinction, as it means that the copyright still resides with you. The other important thing to note is that this licence is granted even after you stop using the product, but this appears to be in order to allow Google to continue displaying information in other services, rather than specifically relevant to Google Drive.

This brings me to the main point: This Terms of Service document is not specific to Google Drive, but is applicable to every Google service. Unless the segment of Google you’re using has more restrictive terms that supersede the ones outlined in this blog post, they already apply to you. This means, for instance, that these terms already applied to the documents I had in Google Docs. Or, indeed, to any email I have received since 2004, thanks to my Gmail account.

A similar outcry happened around a year ago, when it became clear that many picture sharing services owned any images that were uploaded to their servers, and Dropbox itself was implicated in a similar brouhaha when they updated their TOS in 2011. One of the things that arose from that (as well as a huge reaction from their users) was a blog post outlining why Dropbox needed the things outlined in their TOS. A lot of the permissions granted are there just so that you can have the experience you expect, and the same is almost certainly true of Google.

Google need to update their Terms of Service, just like Dropbox did, to make it clear that the information uploaded to their servers is not going to be used for anything outside of users’ expectations. I’m hopeful that the blog posts and news articles being written on this subject will expedite that process, and that the TOS will be made clearer very soon.² I don’t intend to completely ignore Google Drive, but I would feel much more comfortable using the service if this issue was explicitly addressed by the company.

When I was looking to upgrade from my iPhone 3GS, O2 had discontinued unlimited data on their new contracts, and Three had introduced The One Plan, which provides All You Can Eat data. AYCE is truly unlimited, with no hidden data caps, so that sounded good for VOIP. As such, I switched: I paid £159 for my iPhone, with a contract costing £35 a month. The contract gave me 2000 minutes, 5000 minutes to other Three users, and 5000 text messages a month, as well as unlimited data and unlimited free tethering. But how much would I have paid had I gone with a different network? Let’s find out!¹ (And please do bear in mind that this entry is a little tongue-in-cheek!)

From memory, in the period of time between 15th October 2011 and 15th February 2012, I downloaded around 85GB of data through my 3G connection, with around 60GB uploaded.² It is worth noting that these numbers are not typical — I use far more than the average user, and so most people won’t need to worry about this. If you are worried about using more than a gigabyte or two of data in a month, then I recommend you get a phone with either T-Mobile or Three, for reasons I’ll outline below.

If we assume that both download and upload count against a data limit, then that’s 145GB downloaded over a four month period, which is roughly 35GB per month. What I’m going to do is see how much that would cost on each other network. I’m only looking at twenty-four month contracts (the same as mine) in which the iPhone would have had an upfront cost of around £159, since that seems like a fair comparison. I’m also going to assume that the contracts I’m looking at include tethering at no additional cost.³

O2

I’m going to start with O2, since they’re the company I was originally with. O2 offer a contract that comes with 2GB of data per month and a handset for £169, at £41/month. This means I need to work out what it would cost to add 33GB a month to the plan. As I found out, from O2 Support, 1GB of extra data is £10:

+£10.00 The Works 1GB (You can add two of these a month)

This means I’ve reached 4GB, from 2GB, so I only need to work out how to add the remaining 31GB. Any further spending will need to be paid for on a per-megabyte basis. A further perusal of O2′s website reveals the O2 Pay Monthly Tariff Terms (PDF file), which reveal:

Data usage is measured in kilobytes (KB) and charged at £3.06 per MB. 1MB = 1024 Kilobytes (KB), 1024 MB = 1 Gigabyte (GB).

So, let’s work this out. 2GB of data come with the contract, at £41 per month. To make that 4GB, you need to buy two bolt ons, which come at £20, which make that £61 per month. To get to me actual usage, I need to add 31 GB of data at £3.06 per MB. That works out as 1024 multiplied by 31 multiplied by £3.06, giving a result of £97,136.64 in addition to the £61 a month already calculated. This means £97,162.64 extra per month.

Conclusion: £388,660.56 extra over the course of four months.

Orange

Orange comes next, since they’re the next tab I have open in Chrome. Orange’s highest monthly data limit is 2GB, just like O2, but you can get that with a phone for £139.99, at £61/month. However, I couldn’t find any data pertaining to extra data on the iPhone. The Orange Mobile Internet / Data Charges page tells you to refer to the Orange price guide (PDF file) for iPhone costs, but that doesn’t appear to contain any information on how to exceed the 2GB limit, and the closest I could find was:

£3.06 per Megabyte, up to a maximum of £1.54 a day, this too is subject to a daily fair use limit of 25MB.

As far as I can see, one of two things are true: Either the fair use limit prevents the user going above an extra 25MB/day, or there is no price cap for those exceeding the fair use limit. To get a value on how much extra it would cost, we’ll assume it’s the latter.

Conclusion: £413,718.08 extra over the course of four months.

Tesco Mobile

Tesco offers the phone for £200 on a £35/month contract which yields 1GB of data. As far as I can see, there is no way to add data to this via a bundle (although the Irish Tesco Mobile website does give a way to do this, interestingly). The Tesco pay monthly tariff terms & conditions give us this information:

Once you have used all your Inclusive Credit, any data use which would previously have been included will be charged at the current rate. Click here for details.

This means that the remaining data will be charged (according to the link above) at 60p/MB. This works out to be 1024 multiplied by 34GB multiplied by £0.60.

Conclusion: £83,558.40 extra over the course of four months.

Vodafone

Vodafone charges £139 for a handset with 1GB/month at £41/month, which is in the same area as the previous two companies. The Vodafone Pay Monthly data costs have this to say about the Premium Pack, which costs £15:

While our Premium Pack gives you a whopping 2GB extra each month – great news if you regularly watch YouTube videos or have apps that access the internet frequently.

The page doesn’t stipulate that you can buy multiples, and it might be wise to assume you can only buy one such pack. This means we have 32GB of data to find from somewhere. The same page has this to say:

If you choose not to buy a Standard or Premium Pack, we’ll automatically charge you £5 for 250MB of UK web access as soon as you go over the data allowance already included in your price plan.

This would mean that the extra data would cost £20 per gigabyte used, bumping the extra cost up to £2,644 extra over a four month period. However, to be kind to Vodafone, we’ll assume that we can just buy the extra in Premium Packs, since the page doesn’t tells us otherwise.

Conclusion: £1,044 extra over the course of four months.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile breaks the mould because they started offering unlimited data in January of this year, and their plan also comes with unlimited calls and text messages. An iPhone comparable to mine, at £139 for the handset, is £41/month. I’m rather surprised by this because T-Mobile and Orange are actually now both owned and operated by Everything Everywhere, and the difference between the two companies in this instance is absolutely staggering.

Conclusion: £24 extra over the course of four months.

The conclusions

When I started writing this blog entry, I had no idea quite how much money I’d be talking about. If you’re a heavy data user, like me, it will cost you insane amounts of money to be with O2, Orange or Tesco Mobile, and a mildly mental amount to be with Vodafone. And all the above assumes that the companies in question would put up with the amounts of data involved instead of simply cutting you off for breach of contract (an assumption which, it must be said, is probably a bad one!).

Both Three and T-Mobile offer good tariffs with reasonable upfront costs. I have recently used mobiles on both networks⁴ and both have good signal, in my experience (your mileage may vary). So, if you’re looking for a new phone and you need data, you need look no further than these two companies.

Dealing with the theft

I have heard so many stories about people finding their phone’s thief via Apple’s Find my iPhone service (available as an iOS app or from the iCloud website). After calling the police, I immediately logged into the service, but my iPhone was reported as being offline. You can send a message to your handset even if it isn’t showing up, and you can ask it to send you an email next time the iPhone’s location is found. I ticked the relevant boxes and decided to hope an email came through. When the police arrived they took my Apple ID (email and password) to try and use the same service.¹

As well as taking my Apple ID details, the police wrote down my statement, and also walked me through processes like cancelling the SIM card. They have a list of phone numbers for all the major British mobile networks, and so I was able to phone my provider, Three. They were able to cancel the SIM that had been in my phone, and a new one was put into the mail for me. The next step was to lodge an insurance claim, which I did the next morning. After I’d sorted all the annoying parts out (talking to the police, the phone company and the insurance company), I started to delve into the tech aspects of what I could do.

Securing the phone

The first thing I did was limit the access the phone had to various web services that I use. I started with Gmail, since it literally contains every email I’ve received over the last eight years and there’s potentially a goldmine of personal information to be found there. Fortunately, I use something called two factor authentication on my account². This means you need a code and the password in order to access my account. This makes me a lot safer from people trying to access it online. It also means that any apps that can’t use this system (for example, the iPhone’s Mail client) have to use a specially generated password to access my account, which I was able to revoke, thus cutting off the thief’s potential access (I also cut him off from my YouTube account, which was possibly less urgent).

Another step I took with Gmail was to close any open sessions that I have, and force every computer other than my laptop to ask for my password and authentication code next time I tried to use it. This was a bit of a pain, but it meant the thief would not be able to access my email at all on my phone. I did the same with my Facebook account, and I changed the password on my work email address so that it would be inaccessible.

Losing my data

When I returned home, I looked at iPhoto and iTunes, because I wanted to see what the backup status of the phone was. I checked Photo Stream, which showed that the photographs I had taken the previous day had uploaded to iCloud, but the photographs I had taken on the day the phone was stolen had been lost. Since I uploaded a few to Instagram on my travels, they’re not totally gone, but it’s still a little irritating. I also checked the iPhone’s profile in iTunes to see when the last iCloud backup had been. It told me 4th April, about a week prior to the theft; it was roughly coincident with the last time I’d plugged my phone into my Mac to charge. That was more annoying, since a week is a lot of lost data!

The most annoying thing to lose was the Train Tickets app by CrossCountry Trains. They’ve just started charging £1 to get tickets from self-service machines in train stations, and the only free delivery option is now something called an m-ticket. This sends a barcode (which is your ticket) to the app, and you show it on the train when asked for your ticket. This is all very well, but if your phone has been stolen, it presents obvious issues. I rang CrossCountry and selected the appropriate options to talk about an existing reservation, and was put through to an overseas call centre.

I explained my situation, said I was willing to pay a surcharge for one of the non-free delivery methods, and asked whether my ticket could be resent to me. I was told no. Asking to speak to a supervisor got me nowhere, and eventually the sales rep gave me the complaints centre phone number (she couldn’t transfer me because it’s a UK-based call centre) and I hung up. Upon ringing them, I was told that there was indeed something they could do: just install the app on another device. Ring the complaints centre, and give them the new app’s Download ID, and they can transfer the ticket. If you’re ever in this situation, bear that in mind!³

Replacing the phone

Fast forward to today, and, after using a Nokia 3510i⁴ for the better part of a week, I had the conversation with my insurance company that enabled me to go and buy my replacement iPhone 4S. I plugged my new SIM card in as soon as I got home, went through the setup, and input my Apple ID details expecting to see the backup from two weeks ago show up. Instead, it reported that there were no backups.

Instantly, an icy sensation ran through me. What do you mean by no backups?

I checked iTunes to see whether there were any backups on my Mac, as opposed to on iCloud — no such luck. I then checked the iCloud panel in System Preferences, and it told me I had 1GB of space used for a backup made on 11th April, the day my phone was stolen⁵. Somewhat reassured that the issue should at least be a solvable one, I Googled, and found a very enlightening Apple Discussions thread. Imagine you have an iPhone running a new version of iOS, and you make a backup. If you then try to restore that backup to an iPhone running an older version, it turns out that iCloud will report you have no backups, with no further error nor explanation. This is a total travesty of user experience, and something that Apple badly need to work on.⁶

My iPhone 4S, before it was stolen, was running iOS 5.1, the latest version. The replacement I was given was running an older version. I selected ‘Set the iPhone up as a new phone’, selected to skip inputting my iCloud details and skipped as many steps as possible until iTunes showed the iPhone and I was able to register the handset and update the software to iOS 5.1. I then restored the iPhone to its factory settings through iTunes, followed the same steps and my iCloud backup showed up as clear as day.

Now that I’ve restored from that backup, I’ve logged into Find my iPhone and asked it to remotely wipe my iPhone next time it comes online. I also want to try to give Apple its serial number and IMEI number, in case anyone ever takes it to the Genius Bar to get it repaired.

Regardless of any teething problems I may have had, I was just happy to get my phone back up and running. Being without an iPhone was not a great experience for a host of reasons, and having a replacement lets me put this entire sorry mess behind me (as well as allowing me peace of mind regarding the train ticket situation). It could have been a lot worse, and I’m extremely grateful that it wasn’t.

I recently came to the Bay Area and was given a tour of some fascinating places by España, the editor of this fine fanzine. As a result I was asked whether I would write an article on the museums and other centres of culture that I visited. I jumped at the chance to inflict more of my writing on you, and so this article was born. My trip to San Francisco included my introduction to the California Academy of Sciences, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, an art gallery called Varnish and the Computer History Museum – I am going to tackle them in chronological order, and so this article begins with España and I heading to Golden Gate Park.

Our jaunt to the California Academy of Sciences took place on a Thursday evening, because Thursdays are when NightLife happens, and NightLife is amazing. Imagine the brilliance and fascination contained within the only building in the world to house an aquarium, a planetarium and a rainforest; then imagine that with music, alcohol and a strict 21+ policy and you have the idea perfectly. Each night has a theme around which the events revolve; the night we went it was ‘SF Streets’ and there were exhibitions of street art and a DJ playing some funky mashups (which was a good foreshadowing to my visit to the DNA Lounge later in the week; but that lies rather beyond the purview of this piece).

One thing I must say before I go any further is that the free iPhone app (which, regrettably, is not yet available for Android or WP7 users) offered by the museum is amazing. It does everything I wanted it to do. It lets you check into different areas of the museum (which, handily, also tells you what there is to see) and also offers more information about stuff that might pique your interest. If you’re going, I really do advise you download and use the app as you go around; it certainly added to my experience! Another thing that added to the experience was the array of cocktail bars – each bar had a unique (and not badly priced) cocktail as well as a range of spirits and mixers. If you’re a completist, like me (or an alcoholic, like España) you can complete the set of the specials!

The entire museum is open, with a couple of caveats; the number of planetarium shows is limited (and there is often more than one show during the night) so if you want to go, make getting a ticket a priority and do it before you do anything else. You’ll be able to specify what time you want to see the relevant show, and that lets you plan the rest of your evening around that point. Alongside the planetarium shows is a timetable of other things going on throughout the night (talks and suchlike) – it might be handy to glance at this before tying yourself down to a specific showtime. It’s also worth noting that the rainforest closes down at 8pm, so bear that in mind if that looks like something you want to do.

The rainforest is spectacular, although some of the butterflies came a little closer to us than I would necessarily have liked (the big ones are a lot less cute than the little ones!). The birds flying around, the fish and lizards dotted in enclosures throughout, and the water life swimming in the faux river below you are all sights to behold and the juxtaposition of the three really helps lend the animals you see a context that you often don’t quite get at zoos, aquariums or aviaries. This is reinforced by the way in which you progress through the rainforest – you start at the bottom and climb up three levels, with different animals on each according to how high you are. The butterflies go from being things fluttering in the distance above you to being things that are nearly landing on you as they swoop past, and the water creatures go from right there to beautiful swimming shapes seen from above.

Of course, when you reach the top of the rainforest, you have to come back down, but this is handled for you in the form of a lift that takes you from the top reaches of the dome you’ve walked through and takes you down into the aquarium, filled with water and wonder. Some of the creatures down there are amazing – the jellyfish are just one example of that, illuminated in an array of different and bright colours. The aforementioned river is visible from the bottom, when you’re on the lower level, via a transparent tunnel and various amazing viewing stations; our favourite animal in there was the turtle and it was amazing to see it swim by, right next to the glass.

There’s a huge variety of stuff to see in the aquarium and it took us until our planetarium show to wander around to our hearts’ content. However, we didn’t want to miss the planetarium so we went to see it. It was an interesting show, that combined the science of how cells are structured with information on the structure of the universe itself: from the very small to the very large. The academy very clearly puts a lot of pride into its productions and they were very well made indeed.

At the mid-point of the show, the hostess took the microphone and talked a little about recent science in the areas being discussed. This was incredibly impressive since she talked about exoplanets and the 700th confirmed discovery of an exoplanet, which had occurred only weeks before the talk – clearly the information in the shows is kept very recent! I’ve never been in a planetarium show that had a segment for more recent science in that way, and I thought it worked very well indeed – I shall have to tell a friend who works at the UK’s National Space Centre, clearly.

For the denouement of the evening, we decided to quickly catch some things we hadn’t yet seen in the time we had before the museum closed. This involved getting another cocktail (naturally) and then climbing the stairs up to the museum’s living roof, which is totally interesting in its own right. However, drinking cocktails in the cool night air with the stars all around was incredibly romantic, and for this reason I highly, highly recommend NightLife if you’re looking for a slightly quirky and unconventional location for a date. There was a telescope pointed at Jupiter through which the planet and all four Galilean moons were visible, and España and I were thrilled to be able to see them. All in all, it was a completely magical night.

The California Academy of Sciences is open 9:30am – 5pm (11am – 5pm on Sundays) and opens again for NightLife between 6pm and 10pm on Thursdays. Their iOS apps are available through their website at www.calacademy.org and the Pocket Penguins app is also offered on Android. Entry is $29.95 for adults and subject to a $5 charge if you go at a peak period (although tickets purchased online are not subject to that charge and can be used at any time). Tickets to NightLife are $12, which is significantly cheaper, doesn’t require taking the day off work, and means you can buy alcohol (no guesses as to which I think is the better deal). You will need ID to prove you are over 21, naturally. The theme for February 2nd is ‘Bourbon & Bull’, whereas February 9th sees ‘Animal Attraction’ – see their website for more details.

Now we move onto the Contemporary Jewish Museum and their exhibition on Ehrich Weiss. Weiss is better known to millions of people as Harry Houdini, and the collection was entitled Houdini: Art and Magic. The pieces on display describe the magic he performed and his life through a number of artefacts from his life. There were several such things, including props he used and diaries he kept, but the twist of the exhibition was the other pieces being displayed; namely, a series of pieces of artwork inspired by the man. This lent the exhibition a real sense of context (and almost interactivity) which really served to illustrate the impact he had – not only on his fellow magicians, but on the rest of the world.

I find magic fascinating as a form of entertainment. I loved the Magic Castle in Los Angeles and have flirted with performing magic myself, on occasion (not always entirely successfully!). As a result, I found the exhibition an illuminating look at a man who basically set the stage for many of the contemporary magicians working today. The sense of context was reinforced by a series of videos around the installation – there were clips from films based on Houdini’s life playing on a large screen, and then later in the exhibition another screen showing interviews with and tricks by magicians inspired by Houdini (amongst which were David Blaine and Penn and Teller, both of whom have been heavily affected by the man).

Another string to Houdini’s bow, alongside his magic and public performances, was his scepticism. He loved to debunk supernaturalism and spiritualism (another area in which Penn and Teller have clearly followed his lead, with programmes such as Bullshit!). One very interesting anecdote told of his clashes with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s wife, who attempted to hold a séance for him.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum is open 11am – 5pm, except for Thursdays, on which it opens 1pm – 8pm. It is closed on Wednesdays, however, and can also shut depending on Jewish holidays. Admission is $12 (free on the first Tuesday of each month) and the website is www.thecjm.org if you want to find out more. Houdini: Art & Magic ran until January 16th, 2012; if you want to see it you can head to the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (in Wisconsin) between February 11th and May 13th. Alternatively, if that’s a bit too far away for your tastes, you could visit www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/houdini and follow the link to download the iOS app for $0.99 (no Android/WP7 app at the time of writing).

Varnish is an art gallery in San Francisco that we visited on the same day. España mentioned that our visit occurred in conjunction with the Houdini exhibition in SF/SF #124, and there’s not much to add that she didn’t say much better than I could. Check her article out!

Last, but certainly not least, is the Computer History Museum. This is a museum that charts developments in computing from the very earliest computers (including a working Difference Engine) right through to the Internet age. It’s a fascinating place, full of history and shiny gadgets, but the real fannish link is the curator who was at the centre of our trip – the one and only Christopher J. Garcia!

We arrived at the Caltrain station and caught the bus from there to the museum, taking us along roads winding between Google buildings until we reached our stop. We jumped off the bus and I started to ask where the museum was when I saw it, right next to where we had gotten off. It’s an impressive building from the outside and the walk to the entrance is similarly striking, culminating in entry to a rather grand entrance hall (with a bar, which is the best way to enhance any such space). The first thing one sees is the ticket desk; the second, Christopher J. Garcia sitting cross legged behind the ticket desk typing quickly on his MacBook.

We exclaimed as we saw him, and he exclaimed in return, jumping up and getting us complimentary entry, which was really lovely. The first challenge was putting on my little metal entrance badge – it was one of those with a tag that wraps around a draw string or the hem of a shirt, and I’d never seen one before. With that challenge surmounted, we entered the main exhibition, which is entitled Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing.

One of the things I like about this main exhibition is the narrative it presents of the evolution of computing, presented chronologically. As a result, it starts from the very first computers, also known as abaci. I had never actually used an abacus before being shown how to by Chris; they are very elegant, and I can see how they could have been used to achieve great things. Eventually, the exhibition moves beyond the abacus and to machines that required slightly more complexity to create. One example of early machines is IBM’s entry into computing with the tabulating machines it sold prior to World War 2, eventually leading (through things such as missile guidance systems and an Enigma machine) to the 1950s.

The computers of the 50s are interesting because they look like things right out of science fiction – indeed, España was incited to squee over the Univac, a computer made in 1951 which was, for a time, a name synonymous with computer. As one reaches the 1960s, the IBM System/360 is a beautiful powder blue creation, and looks just like the computers from Thunderbirds (which makes sense given they were first introduced a mere year apart). The 1970s bring the Cray supercomputer, which still looks futuristic and evokes SF imagery over thirty years later.

As the exhibition leaves the 1970s behind, the narrative becomes a little less chronological and starts to expand into different technologies grouped together. So, from a strict progression of time to collections dedicated to such things as the minicomputer (or, as we call it today, ‘the computer’). This area of the museum featured what must be a contender for ‘most misogynistic computer ever designed’ – the Honeywell Kitchen Computer, advertised with the tagline “if she can only cook as well as Honeywell can compute”. This was followed by robots, which were amazing, and the AARON Paint System, a computer that produces artwork designed by Harold Cohen. The issue of whether the artist is the machine or the designer of the machine is an interesting one, and is explored in a video playing nearby.

The segment featuring the Apple I (signed by Steve ‘Woz’ Wozniak) came after that. This was a fascinating look at the rise of the home computer, and was positioned close to the exhibits on computer games and videogames – the Macintosh was released the year before the Nintendo Entertainment System – and so I fawned over the ancient Apple products before playing Chris at a videogame (he thrashed me soundly and completely). I was also happy that there was a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on display with original packaging (of course, if you just want to play it, you can do so on the BBC website).

Chris had to leave at that point so he rushed us through to the Difference Engine, which is presented separately from other exhibits (for obvious reasons). It is very shiny and exactly what I expected; you really do feel that you’re in the presence of something special. It’s next to a separate exhibition about computing in chess, which was similarly very interesting. We rounded out our trip by sneaking back into Revolution and looking at the last parts, focusing on networking and the Internet: the Monopoly board with websites instead of streets (the .com Edition, as the Internet handily informs me) was particularly hilarious. Google didn’t get a mention, with Yahoo! getting the honour of Mayfair – oh, how times change!

There was only one more thing to do after we had seen everything we wanted to see – go to the gift shop. It was a rather good gift shop, but I deliberately restrained myself to only buying a postcard. Well, okay, a postcard and a tin of Super Mario Bros. plasters. The Computer History Museum opens from 10am to 5pm and is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays; entry is $15. They also have the best website of any museum in the world (if you disagree, feel free to write a letter of comment), with lots of information and also many fascinating online exhibits, at www.computerhistory.org – I highly recommend a visit.

Friday (6th April)

8pm — The SF video game canon
What are the essential science-fiction video games? What stands up to modern-day scrutiny? What was influential on later generations of games and gamers, and what are the hidden classics we should rediscover?

11pm — Late Night Horror: Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (18)
This film was made in 2001 and discovered by myself and a group of other physics undergraduates about eight years later. It’s a brilliant film for all the right (and many of the wrong) reasons! I was asked to introduce this film and also lead a discussion afterwards, and I’m excited to be doing so.

Saturday (7th April)

1pm — Superheroes in the movies
Do comic superheroes make good films? How could they be improved?

2pm — Who likes reboots?
A panel on reboots, looking at whether the upcoming Spider-Man reboot makes any sense whatsoever, amongst other things.

4pm — Why fan funds?
Olympus will be one of those rare British conventions where we have a North American and Australasian fan fund representatives visiting this shore. Come along and meet them, find out what Fan Funds are about and how you too could run for one.

6pm — Online fandom (saving fandom or killing it?)
E-zines are largely a pull not push medium, based round fast production and few review columns, leading to a proliferation of fanzines which don’t necessarily talk to each other, or make up a coherent community. E-lists allow fans to talk to each other, but also to create their own circles which don’t necessarily interact with the rest of fandom. Could technological change be leading to a narrowing of UK fanzine fannish circle?

Sunday (8th April)

9pm — Fan fund auction
The fan fund auction is an Eastercon tradition (as well as a tradition of many other conventions around the world). This year will be no different, other than for the presence of two fan fund delegates, so please do come and buy something strange and awesome!

Monday (9th April)

Noon — At what audience is modern SF TV aimed?
Too much UK material (terrestrial & satellite) seems aimed at primarily YA/teen (young adult) demographic whereas US content has a more adult feel (e.g. Battlestar Galactica). However, programmes such as Misfits, Attack the Block and The Fades seem aimed at the E4/BBC 3 audience. Some shows (particularly Misfits) seemed to transcend that, whereas something like SGU (which was targeted at young males) didn’t.

2pm — TAFF talk
John Coxon talks about his experiences as TAFF delegate.

3pm — Virtual convention
What is it like to attend a convention from your own living room? How easy is it to interact with fans over the internet? Is it more fun to attend panels online than in person? Panellists offer views from in and outside “the box”. Come along and tweet the experience (or stay in your room and follow it on #melonfarmer).

7pm — Fan fund quiz
To round out an excellent weekend of fan fundraising and related shenanigans, the fan fund administrators and delegates invite you to an evening of answering questions with your friends. Entry costs a £1 donation to the fan funds per person and prizes will be available for the best and worst teams!